Definition of Progress

Humanity, across the ages, has definitely seen progress in many different areas and in gargantuan amounts. The growth experienced, however, is not often referred to as progress due to the fact that it comes with immeasurable costs and the scale of what is old and what is new is constantly changing. The word progress, though, should not be used only so sparingly. No matter how small, progress is still progress, all in all. It may seem to some, in the technological world, that not all advancement is worth the effort because technology is constantly rescaled to the point where progress is only really considered progress for about a month or so and something new and improved comes out or is discovered. A great investment? Yes. I feel that it is entirely worth it, nonetheless. To me, progress is a sentimentally rich word and I have a very particular way of defining it and using it.

The word "progress" has two different parts of speech and both revolve around the same basis. Progress can be used as a noun when discussing how far along one has gotten in completing a certain project or activity, like, "how much progress have you made on the essay?" In other words, this inquiry is asking how far along has the person gotten in the path to completing the essay. This is supported because the commonly asked question contains "how much" which signifies that it can be measured in some sort of amount or extent. It is a measurement referring to a sort of length but progress is intangible and cannot be measured with units such as inches or meters. When it is used as a verb "to progress" means to move along in the path to completing or achieving a goal. Both parts of speech have common ground by both referring to completion of an task. To me, however, there is a certain way to go about moving along in the fore mentioned path to completion.

In reality, deadlines still exist. With myself being in AP courses, I know just how real those due dates are and they sometimes hit me like walls of bricks. And while it is not wrong to be reminded of those deadlines while working, the deadline should not be one's only motivation for doing the work. If you find exactly what you are required to do, give every inch of focus to it, and be flexible enough to take some interest in it, you will create wonderful work and you will do it immensely faster than you would think. To obtain this, however, one must have the right mindset. This mindset is paying attention to only the one task while all other projects and assignments are placed behind you, being completely focused and attentive to the one activity. Coinciding with this, it would be beneficial for one to take interest in the activity and be motivated by the gain of genuine knowledge or experience. Otherwise, if one is very hesitant, lazy, or only focused on completing the task quickly, he or she would very easily be distracted and even not when distracted, the work would only be of decent quality at best. In this day and age especially, one may find it extremely beneficial to turn off their smartphone or put it at the complete opposite side of the room to avoid distraction. Once the optimal mindset is obtained, one will move along at a steady pace and the work will be entirely good. Be mindful that this is not the only way to do work, but it is certainly a reliable and efficient way of doing so. It is vitally important for one to remember that it may be a slow process, like walking from one side of a soccer field to the other side. Every step, though it may be tiny, is still bringing you closer to the goal. As long as one could think of it like that, he or she will reach the goal at a reasonably steady pace. Due to the fact that some tasks take more time and energy than others, time management is something one will eventually need to be familiar with. If the goal is to finish everything in a timely manner, It is vital to utilize every opportunity that one receives to work or plan something. It may require reprioritizing, but in order to achieve or complete something, it may be necessary. All of these components are, to me, put together to create the best way for one to go about being productive and creating the most progress. While it can be annoying and tedious to be working at a task for an extended period of time while yielding small results, all of those results, if obtained correctly and with the right mind set, are extremely valuable. I, myself, used to not ever put work into something if I knew or I thought I wouldn't finish it entirely. I now recognize that as a terrible mindset and a very bad habit. If you put in an hour of work into one project and you take your time on it, whatever is done will be of superb quality. While not a lot of diverse work may be done and the project might not be completely finished, very good work will be done on the one specific part. Take, for instance, practicing music. If the people from the section all gather and work for an hour on one specific phrase of music that is giving them trouble, then, even though it could be very tedious, that phrase will be consistently better when they perform it or practice it in complete context. I, myself, for instance, spent one whole one-hour practice session with my fellow snare drum players on ten measures of music that had been giving us trouble, but after that rehearsal, we played those measures well nine times out of ten as opposed to four or five times out of ten. In short, there can be valuable progress made in practicing a small detail. It can be related to refining ores or even diamonds. The process of refining the diamonds or the ores could be very repetitive and can require a lot of energy, but the end product is a very valuable diamond or gold bar.

With all being said, this, to me, is what progress is all about. What it means, and what I think is best for going about obtaining it. The productive flow of humanity is constantly being revolved around fast perfection and, unfortunately, it is not realistic to try and meet each and every demand with perfection and "tolerable" speed. Some things require more time than others and that is okay, but we just need to understand importance of 100% focus and time management. This means working for an entire half an hour as opposed to 15 minutes performing miscellaneous tasks and the other half barely hobbling along with the work

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